According to various booking sites this hotel opened for bookings on the 27th September 2021 but my research indicates that it will not open to the public until 25th March 2022.
This new hotel has replaced River House at Chancery Street has been vacant since the motor taxation service moved out in 2007. It was owned for about 15 years by developers Joe and Patrick Linders who are best known for their involvement in the revival of the Smithfield area of Dublin.
River House was a 5-storey office block on Chancery Street, Dublin. It was described as a “brutalist eyesore” by the Sunday Times. It was ugly be any definition.
Permission to build River House was granted in 1972, and the building was completed in 1973. It had curtain walling at ground and 1st floor levels, with 4 additional storeys above with pre-cast cladding. The architect of the building has been disputed. Frank McDonald attributed it to John Thompson and Partners, but this led to a libel suit during which it was stated that “neither John or David Thompson of the firm John Thompson and Partners had anything to do with the design or erection of River House”. It appears to have been the work of Patrick J. Sheahan and Partners.
After a dispute between the Department of Justice and the Dublin Corporation as to who would occupy the building, the Corporation established its motor tax office in the office block, and for many years it was Dublin’s only motor tax office. The building stood vacant from the late 2000s, and attracted anti-social behaviour.
River House was described as “scourge” to the area, and “is considered to be of little or no architectural merit”. It was recorded by the Dublin City Council as a dangerous building in February 2016.
River House was initially purchased by Joe and Patrick Linders, who were involved in the redevelopment of parts of the Smithfield area. The building was purchased by Melonmount Ltd in 2017 for €8 million, and permission was sought to demolish it and replace it with a hotel. The financier, Derek Quinlan, was an advisor on the deal. An Taisce have been critical of the proposed replacement building, describing it as “monolithic” and “lumpen”. River House was demolished in 2018.
BELOW ARE TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF RIVER HOUSE – APRIL 2014
LITTLE STRAND STREET RUNS BEHIND THE ORMOND HOTEL SITE
There are two sections to Strand Street the section from Lower Liffey Street to Capel Street is Great Strand Street and upon crossing Capel Street is becomes Little Strand Street. There are two building sites on Little Strand Street and to the best of my knowledge a hotel is to be built on the one at the junction with Capel street. During the planning phase the city council claimed plans for the hotel at the corner of Capel Street and Strand Street Little would “exacerbate” the over concentration of hotels and fundamentally undermine the vision for the provision of a dynamic mix of uses within the city centre area, however planning permission has been granted.
Little Strand Street is even less known to most Dubliners that Great Strand Street. Little Strand street runs behind the construction site that once was the Ormond Hotel and it connects Capel Street to East Arran Street which in turn connects Mary’s Abbey to Ormond Quay.
A €25 million redevelopment of the Ormond Hotel on Ormond Quay was expected to have been complete by March or April of 2020 but work works appears to have been suspended.
By the end of 2019, there was planning permission in place for as many as a hundreds hotels apart-hotels, and student accommodation complexes in Dublin city and the majority were within walking distance of my apartment. Today in 2022 there are many half-built and unoccupied hotels. At this stage I cannot determine if the Ormond Hotel redevelopment project is to continued but judging by the state of the construction of the site there is every reason to be concerned.
The Ormond Hotel was located on Dublin’s historic Georgian quays, which were laid out by the Duke of Ormond in the late 17th century. The Ormond Hotel, which began operating from the site in 1889, was building of special cultural significance on account of it being the fictional location for the Sirens episode of James Joyce’s magnum opus, Ulysses, which chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904.
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